


The Shade of Poison Trees

by halfthewords (Sierra), ptolemy



Category: Yu-Gi-Oh!, Yu-Gi-Oh! Series
Genre: Ancient Egypt, M/M, Vampire AU
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-12-28
Updated: 2015-12-28
Packaged: 2018-05-09 22:51:34
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,124
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5558579
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Sierra/pseuds/halfthewords, https://archiveofourown.org/users/ptolemy/pseuds/ptolemy
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In his dying moments, Bakura meets a man who deals in life and death.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Shade of Poison Trees

 

There is singing, deep in the temple. It rings down the halls, intoning without words, a deep choir of voices that carries and carries and carries. Bakura knows where the voices come from. The map is sprawled in his mind, twisting tunnels and dead-end caverns that move ever underground. He knows where the people are, where they live here in the dark, worshipping, praying, keeping secrets.

He knows where the priests sing, and he knows where he lies, bleeding on the ground, and they are so far apart he might not even walk there in a day.

If he could walk. If he could do anything at all but stare at the tiny squares of sunlight filtering from skylights high above and listen to the somber choir of the deep. He watches dust drift and glitter in the rays of the sun. He curses and hates and thinks he would cry if he still had any energy in him for it.

Instead he just lies on the floor, looking up at the place where he toppled from, at least 20 _khet_ above him, wheezing through crushed lungs and an arrow shaft in his chest. Just as the trap he triggered was meant to do. He marks his mental map.

He had scaled for half a day through dark and rotting tunnels, trusting that they led to more than the musty, untouched air would have suggested. When the stone grew more polished and the carvings more recent, he moved carefully, knowing what was coming, confident— 

It was only a small misstep, a move with his right foot instead of his left, and suddenly the walls of the very narrow tunnel had opened into a thousand pointed ends, while a stone slab slid out behind him and became a wall that pushed with all speed into the path of the arrows. Within the space of a breath, Bakura was hurtling down the path pursued by the stone wall, trying to keep ahead of arrows that grazed and cut, and then found purchase in his leg—and as he fell, his chest—and then he wasn’t up, he wasn’t _up_ , had to _get up_ and wall was pushing him, mangling him, grating flesh into stone when he tried to resist and then unceremoniously—without warning—the ground was gone.

And he fell. He fell long enough to consider his fall and curse his mapmaker to the deepest pit of Ammit’s stomach. And then, like so much meat and bone, he crunched into the stone floor below.

Just like that.

At least, he thinks, if he must die alone, at least he will die with the sun on his face. He closes his eyes to wait—both for the sun to fade and for his blood to dry on the stone steps. Whichever comes first.

 His heart slows to a staccato beat and formless shapes dance behind his eyelids. He would pray if he were a coward but that is not the life he has led.   A faint smirk tugs at the corner of his mouth.

_I’m ready._

A shadow falls over him. There is no sound of breathing or footsteps, but he feels a presence. A strong one. Silent. Briefly, he wonders how his instincts—honed from years of use and sharp as any _khopesh_ —could have failed him. He thinks of the blood he has lost, but to lose his wits along with it… He curses every step he has taken to reach this point. To blunder in the most basic of ways when all his life has depended on the very thing that has ruined him. He feels like laughing, hysterically maybe, at the irony of his circumstances. This is a better fate than any punishment the priests could have conjured for him, that much is certain.

His eyes snap open.

Obscured by the glint of the sun is the outline of a man, long and lean in the dying light.

Then the figure moves, dark blond hair haloed in the sun, and the expression on his face is one Bakura thinks might be scorn. The silhouette moves, shifts, folds over him, and Bakura thinks he might be surveying, inspecting him.

“Not,” he breathes, and he hears the death rattle even in his own voice. Breathing around the words, even thinking about the shape of them is a struggle, and the words sound wet and thick. “Not…much…t’have… yours… soon ‘nough…”

The man makes a noise in his throat, almost like a sneer, and puts one hand against Bakura’s chest near where the shaft of the arrow stands. A doctor, then? With hopes to save him? Bakura would make a sneer of his own, but even keeping his eyes open is too much a struggle. All the instincts are slack. His body is a heavy, weightless thing. Very little matters, least of all this man who comes at his last hour. If he is death, let him come. Bakura closes his eyes, breathes out.

There is a sound of metal, all far away.

Then something is pressed to his lips, something wet, and a word spoken, “Drink.”

Still so far away. Bakura does nothing but he does not resist, and something warm slides over his tongue: sharp, tang and iron, down his throat, no strength even to cough it back, but it’s burning, burning, burning.

It burns through his stomach and keeps going, ripping through his limbs and jerking his fingers and feet, and suddenly Bakura is back in the weight of his body, he is meat and bone and heavy on the ground and the world has gone insane around him.

He hears the singing again – it faded while he lay on the stone, but now it is everywhere, it is vibrating in the very air around him, shaking it, shaking him, and his eyes are open but the sun is so blinding that all he sees is fire, the sun’s fire blazing from a thousand points above him as the shadow of the man draws back, one arm pulling away from his face.

Fire, fire, and the singing, screaming, the world is ending, the world is beginning, and he is alive, he is alive—

 And then the shadow moves, and with a deft snap it breaks the tail of the arrow still standing inside him. The pain is immediate and without warning, no time for shock, hotter and sharper than the fire, no time for screaming even though his body is screaming, it is taut and arched to the sun, and maybe he is screaming but he can hear nothing, nothing at all but the singing deep in the temple—

And then he is swallowed by the black, and remembers nothing else.

**Author's Note:**

> sierrasuke.tumblr.com (Sierra), and habitsandhobbies.tumblr.com (ptolemy) 
> 
> Feedback is very much loved and appreciated. Thank you!


End file.
